Party Planning for Raviv’s 1st Birthday Party

Planning my little boy’s birthday party is a stressful bliss for me…I love thinking of ways how to make his party memorable, yet hating that these things are going to cost, and then becoming ecstatic when I think of ways to cut cost, and then hate myself again when I realize that my eureka! cost-cutting measures are actually even more expensive and troublesome. But this does not deter me.

I’ve started planning my little boy’s 1st birthday party when he was two weeks old, and this is not an exaggeration. At first, he was supposed to have a pirate party, but Tatay and Lola Emma didn’t like a pirate party…bad daw ang pirate. I then suggested jungle safari, and Tatay, being a BS Zoology grad, liked the idea. Since then, I take a few hours almost every month to plan my son’s party. I suggested to Randy to hold the party in my hometown in Mindanao because we will probably have no guests if we hold it here in eLBi. This is because almost all of our friends and colleagues are single, and hubby has a very small family who are not close to him, plus Raviv’s birthday is on Dec. 26—our friends will probably be still on vacation. In Mindanao, the Sales clan is very close-knit and has plenty of children, plus many of my childhood friends have children of their own. Food there is cheap too. So we finalized that Raviv’s party will be held there.

In September, I started super seriously planning Raviv’s party; this was when I started creating the layout of his invitation and started ordering party supplies from a Oriental Trading, a US-based party supplies website. On Friday, I got the party supplies just hours after I got the printed invites.

To say that I was disappointed with how the invitations turned out is an understatement. I hate them, as the printing is too blurry! You see, I did the design and layout of my son’s invites and had a printing press print them. I won’t mention the name of the printing press but I should have known it is going to be palpak—there were so many telltale signs! First, the owner does not reply to my emails (just how difficult is it to reply?!?). Second, I asked him to test print first but lo and behold!!! Print agad lahat, hindi man lang nagpakita sa akin ng print quality sample! Tuloy, I had no choice but to accept the printed invites which were so unfortunately blurry. Third, the promised deadline was moved thrice. Hay, I know you think that I should have lashed at the man, but I can’t because he was so soft-spoken…your typical phlegmatic person—mabait pero mabagal/unreliable. Anyway, to show you how blurry it turned out, here are some pictures of the printing press-printed invites beside the draft I had printed by my old Canon BJC printer (to think that the reason why I went to a printing press is for a professional look, mas mukha pang amateurish ang lumabas. Sigh)

Frustrating, right? My husband just tells me not to fret because it’s just for children’s party.

Anyway, here are also photos of the stuff I ordered at Oriental Trading. I had them shipped at Mama’s (hubby momma in the US) address, and she includede these in the box she sent us.

Tiger Pinata

Animal Cutouts

I was disappointed with the Jungle Paper Set…its description on the website is “93-piece Zoo Paper Set” but this is all I got! To think that this cost $7!!! Apparently, the “93” includes the eensy weensy cutouts in two sheets

Cupcake Toppers

Jungle Pencils

Wiggle Snakes

Bubble Blows in Jungle Animal Bottles

Jungle Fans

And these are the things I got from Divisoria in August, also for Raviv’s party (told you I plan early)